A Zelda like adventure. Defeat the wizard Kildren and release the kingdom from his wintery curse.

Features an Overworld and 6 dungeons to explore. Includes 6 bosses, and many different enemies, weapons and items.

New in V1.4:

A few changes to make the game easier, especially early in the game.

Added an additional, easy to find chest with a heart in it early in the game.

Made max health be 9, not 8.

After dying you now start with 4 health if you have it, not 3.

Added one more red potion in the first container.

New in V1.3:

Made shield block standard glowing bullets (does not block fireballs). You must be facing the bullet and not be moving or attacking.

Changed static trap that shoots in 4 discrete directions to use fireball (so can't block) - the trap that targets you still uses the standard bullet

Made you start the game after death assuming you have found some heart containers with 3 hearts, not 2.

New in V1.2:

Added some acceleration when first start moving.

New in V1.1:

Yellow Moles (pop up and down) - only hurt you when fully extended now- gives you a bit of warning

Hints:

You can have health up to 9. Hearts are found in chests in both the Overworld and in 4 of the 6 dungeons. Find the Overworld hearts early as your first priority.

There are several important items in stores - find them early.

Defeating all enemies in a room increases chances of more gold being dropped by the last enemy.

There are exactly the right amount of keys in the Overworld and Dungeon - no extras- so keep looking if you're stuck!

Most containers are gone once destroyed and their items found- a few respawn after death- very helpful to regain health after death.

The game tracks number of deaths and time and displays this once you win. Good luck!

For further hints and an Overworld map, see further below.

Music originally composed by Koji Kondo, (C) Nintendo.

Note, if anyone would like to contribute music, let me know. I put the a Zelda song for the Dungeons in as a place holder for those that have played the original Legend of Zelda on NES. It would be great to have an Overworld song, and a dungeon song.

Map of Overworld

Hints below- read on, only if you want them- note some of them might be considered spoilers...!

Heart containers in the Overworld can be found at 2C, and 3A. Get these early - note not all bushes are solid! Note, the keys to open the chests can be found in containers within the Overworld. Make sure to check every container by attacking them!

The first dungeon - the Sewers - is located in 1D - hiding under some containers. In this dungeon be sure to collect the two keys, and use them to open a chest to get a heart container, and also to open the other chest to get to the Boss. Defeating the boss gives you the skeleton key which allows you to pass the gate at 2D.

The store at 3A carries the Mithril Sword - which gives you a +1 to damage. Buy it anytime before Dungeon 2 or 3. It's not recommended to try Dungeon 3 without it.

The second dungeon - Catacombs - is found at 1E. It as well has two keys and two chests, one containing a heart container, the other to pass through to the Boss. Defeat this Boss to get the Lost Soul.

The third dungeon - Cave - is found at 5E. The demon guarding it requires the Lost Soul in order to pass. This dungeon contains two keys and two chests, one to get to the Boss, the other to a treasure room. Defeat the Boss to retrieve the Fire Orb.

A secret store exists at 5D - attack the mountain to reveal the door. This store sells the Crystal Sword which does +2 damage. Get this item at the latest before attempting Dungeon 5 (Sea Cavern). If you find Dungeon 4 too challenging and don't have this sword, get it!

The store at 3D sells the Mithril Shield. Recommend getting this before Dungeon 5.

The fourth dungeon, Fire Tomb, is found at 7B. You require the Fire Orb to pass the guard. This dungeon contains two keys, and two chests. One chest contains a heart container, and the other allows passage to the Boss. Defeat the Boss to get the Talisman.

The Blue Ring can be found at the store at 6C. Buy it before Dungeon 5 at the latest. It reduces damage taken. It is very difficult to win the game without it. To gain access to this store and to the castle, a secret entrance on the top right of 5C through the mountains is revealed by attacking the mountain.

At this point you can proceed to the Castle and attempt the final dungeon, or optional goto Dungeon 5. With the difficulty of Dungeon 6, it's recommended to proceed to Dungeon 5.

Dungeon 5, Sea Cavern, can be found at 3B. You need to find a key from a container not too far away to gain passage. This dungeon contains 2 keys and 2 chests. One chest contains a heart container, the other gains passage to the Boss. Defeat the Boss to retrieve the Red Ring. This doubles damage and is very important to make the final Dungeon and Boss beatable.

Dungeon 6, Castle, is where Kildren lies in wait. The entrance is at 7E. The Talisman is required to pass the outer Guard. This dungeon has 3 keys and chests.

::

The first, and this is my biggest gripe, honestly, is movement! I hate how loose the movement feels. If I just try to tap a direction I never know if I'm going to move 1,2,3,4 or more pixels. This causes me to take damage when I don't want to a lot of the time, especially at the very first room trying to clear the two Mole-like enemies, because everytime I try to turn around to face them i end up moving like 4 pixels up when I just want to turn around or only move 1 pixel up, even with the slightest hair tap sometimes I get 4 or 3 pixels instead of 1 or 2. If you could standardize the movement a little more that would really lend to the player's experience and create an over all better feeling to the game!

Also, having the shooting enemies not reflect off of your shield when you're not moving and facing them feels baaaaad maaaan.

Secondly is the Mole like enemies that pop up, they should either have some warning, like dirt moving on the ground before they pop up or they should not me able to deal damage on their first frame of popping up. The one where they're like halfway out of the ground. That way the player has time to react if they try to pop out underneathe!

Lastly is just the AI in general, nearly every enemy AI seems very same, same, with only slight variance, while this is very try to the original Zelda, there was still a little more variance than is presence here. This helps the world feel more immersive and diverse, giving each enemy a specific feeling and attack pattern gives the player a reason to CARE about each one and how it's going to affect them and how they need to handle it!

::

Thanks for the feedback. I'm at the token limit, and have done a lot of finding tokens already so I'm getting pretty limited in what I can change without ripping out functionality.

I'll have a look at the movement, there is no acceleration, so that probably is the issue, character moves at 1.5 pixels per game tick. Might have enough tokens to add acceleration.

Yes, if I had a few more hundred tokens I agree on the enemy AI, I had to be very frugal in that aspect to make everything fit, so a lot of re-use across enemy types with a few basic movement types, tried to vary with speed, shooting speed, and a few other things.

I had an inner debate on the mole enemies. My first reaction was the same, but I kind of liked the scariness/stress of not knowing if they'd get you. They only appear in ground in a few screens. Again, with my token count basically 2 away from max, I'll have to be judicious in my changes for better or worse!

::

I dl'd your code last night, going to take a look at it later tonight and cut down on some tokens for you where I can. Code clean-up/compression is a hobby of mine, lol. Not saying I'm good at it, but I can do okay. :)

::

Yeah, I started to dig into your code and usually people hit the token limit and I open their code and immediate spot hundreds of places tokens could be saved. But to be honest, your code is pretty tight and condensed as is, I didn't expect it. Aside from the bracket stuff you mentioned there's really not a lot I see to change. There's some functions that could be condensed and there's some places where you could add to character count to remove from tokens, but really all of that stuff would probably save you 50 to 100 max.

EDIT: That's not to say more space couldn't be saved, but it's beyond my ability, haha.

::

Ok- I figured- realizing the extra brackets on if / then was big, I feel like i could maybe squeeze a hundred or so with some serious refactoring- not sure thatís worth what I could do with 100 tokens!

Thinking with the few I have left I might try for getting the shield to work in some way. Trying to remember exactly how it worked in original Zelda- Iíll have to fire the game up and see

::

::

It took me at least 4 hours to get to the third boss.
So I have to say, I think the dragon boss is pretty strong.
I came to the dragon with 4 blue potions and was able to hit 3 times with my excellent techniques and died. It is just sad to spend so much time on an opponent that is (almost) impossible to defeat, because the recoil makes it almost impossible ;-(
Too bad.
I've never spent so much time in a Pico game and
Every day I try again.
There is a lot of work in this game, I think.
EDIT: Can you say, is it posible to defeat the third boss and how?

::

@gfcarstensen
I want to say that I really like the dungeon layout of your game.
It reminds me a bit of the game "The binding of Isaac".
I would like to play a game that is a mix of the rogue-like system in TBOI and your amazing game in Pico-8.
The game could be played nonstop without it getting boring.
The perfect way to start the day I guess ^^
How you like the idea?
Can you imagine to create this big construction only with pico-8?

::

Hi thanks for the feedback, glad you enjoyed it. I actually first made a Binding of Isaac clone, called Escape 2099. I had been playing that game with my son, and thought something like it could be done on Pico 8. It's available for Pico 8. Below is the URL.

This one has 3 or 5 (I can't remember) randomly generated decks of the ship to work through to escape, has boss battles and some simple power ups as well. I also ran extremely short on tokens by the end! It also supports two players if you had two controllers.

Then I was thinking about the original Zelda, and thought a similar approach could be used for dungeons...and started this one!

::

I do want to like this game, and it's pretty impressive what you have, but it feels too punishing at the moment in my opinion (even in the first dungeon with 5 hearts).

I really don't think the game benefits from the combined mechanics of losing some money on death and starting at reduced health. Since enemies don't seem to drop any healing items, your only hope of getting them after a few failed attempts is from a shop, and losing money makes this much harder to do. You are then essentially requiring the player to purchase potions to get to make use of their additional health (making money even more scarce). Plus, you're already punishing the player significantly by sending them all the way back to town after each death, forcing them to fight their way back through the overworld again.
I think making enemies able to drop red potions would reduce these issues and make the game significantly more enjoyable.

Oh, and if slimes could have a drop shadow so you can tell how they're actually moving when they jump that would be nice too.

::

@Jusiv
If you go to the shop at the beginning, the jug at B2 will get respawn.
It always drop a blue healing potion. Thats how I have played the game. Just let the jug respawn 10 times and you get 10 blue potions.
Its enough to clean any dungeon.
And don't forget to look at the hints/clues.

::

Hey Jusiv- thanks for the feedback- are you playing the latest version where you can find an early heart just below where you start? I basically made you start with 3 hearts now- plus when you die in latest version you start with 4 hearts now instead of 3.

::

At that point I had 5 hearts in my meter.
Also I had missed the note about how blocking worked at first, which does make the game a little easier. Would be nice if that was explained in-game, but I completely understand the token struggle.

::

How do I reset the game? Somehow I got 2 heart containers, but I only have 3 hearts. I've pulled up this game on a different computer and got much further. If I could just reset my game data and start from scratch I think I'd enjoy this game much more.

::

Hello, it's me again.
Would you agree, if I take your sprites and tile map, to port your amazing game to an other fantasy console?
I don't will use any line of your code, because I don't learned lua.
I would write all again with Javascript, no idea if anything will come of it.
But for this, I need your permission (, and a spritemap would be helpful.)
I just want to do this, because I want learn more about game design, e.g. enemy-ai or scrolling chunks...
that 's why I want to choose your game, it offers all features of a good? game, yeah.
I'm sorry If I have some spelling mistakes. My mother tongue is germany.

::

Sure. There's a command from pico-8 console to export the sprite map as a png I believe. Yes, the export command - just export with a filename ending in .png and it exports the sprite sheet. so: export game_sprites.png will save a file called game_sprites.png - the you can type folder in the console to open up a finder or explorer window to the folder.